When the boys emerged onto the sidewalk they looked quickly around. The nearest human being in sight was a man nearly a hundred feet down the street, with his back turned toward them. They didn’t need the reminder of the guns prodding into their backs to know how futile it would be to attempt to run for it.
“Get in here.” Barrack lifted the tarpaulin at the back of a small delivery truck and pointed inside.
The interior of the little truck was dark and smelled overpoweringly of fish. Ken and Sandy sat side by side on a couple of empty fish crates, with Ken close against the driver’s closed cab. The canvas walls of the truck fluttered against their backs. Barrack crawled in after them. The flashlight in his hand held them in a steady beam. He dropped the tarpaulin.
“O.K., Cal,” he said.
The tarpaulin was tied in place, the truck engine started, and the vehicle moved off.
Sandy leaned forward, an inch at a time, until he half shielded Ken from Barrack’s view. Ken found a stub of pencil in his pocket. He drew out one of the half bills, with infinite care, and without daring to look down at it scrawled two words that he hoped would be legible.
Sandy was supplying additional cover by making conversation. “You’ll be picked up by tomorrow morning—at the latest,” he said cheerfully to Barrack.
“Let me worry about that.”
“O.K. It’s your neck.”
Ken forced his fingers between the canvas wall and the side of the truck, the bit of paper held between them. Then he let go and drew his hand back again.